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| Today Programme Report - Text Only Version BBC Radio 4 |
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| Saturday 23rd April 2005 A Birl for Burns This poem is taken from A Night Out With Robert Burns: The Greatest Poems Arranged by Andrew O’Hagan A Birl for Burns From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm, That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them And stick to still in County Antrim Was in my ear. From east of Bann it westered in On the Derry air. My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed, They happed themselves until it thowed, By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed And snedded thrissles, And when the rigs were braked and hoed They’d wet their whistles. Old men and women getting crabbèd Would hark like dogs who’d seen a rabbit, Then straighten, stare and have a stab at Standard habbie: Custom never staled their habit O’ quotin’ Rabbie. Leg-lifting, heartsome, lightsome Burns! He overflowed the well-wrought urns Like buttermilk from slurping churns, Rich and unruly, Or dancers flying, doing turns At some wild hooley. For Rabbie’s free and Rabbie’s big, His stanza may be tight and trig But once he sets the sail and rig Away he goes Like Tam-O-Shanter o’er the brig Where no one follows. And though his first tongue’s going, gone, And word lists now get added on And even words like stroan and thrawn Have to be glossed, In Burn’s rhymes they travel on And won’t be lost. Seamus Heaney The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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